1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to spoken dialog systems and more specifically to a system and method of automatically validating the run-time behavior of a spoken dialog service with the call-flow specification.
2. Introduction
A spoken dialog system is typically represented by a call flow. The call flow is essentially a graph or network, possibly containing cycles over parts of the network. The incorporated application above discloses a rooted tree having a root node, descendent nodes, and leaf nodes. A path from the root node to a leaf node represents a specific dialog. A call flow can contain huge (tens of thousands) or even unbounded numbers of unique dialogs.
Typically, a spoken dialog developer will manually inspect the call flow to generate dialog test cases and scenarios for testing the spoken dialog system. This is a time consuming process and is prone to error. Further, such as process can be incomplete because not every possible sentence or portion of a dialog will be tested. As a result, when the spoken dialog service is deployed, its run-time behavior may not match the call-flow specification. An expert developer's time is then required to test and identify problems with the implementation of the call-flow to determine where the run-time system deviates from the call-flow.
The time and expense of correcting run-time errors in a spoken dialog system may prevent many companies or individuals from deploying such a system for their business. What is needed in the art is a system and method of automatically validating a run-time spoken dialog system to determine and correct its run-time behavior vis-à-vis the call-flow specification.